ESPOO, Finland – Nokia today announced its WaveFabric Elements portfolio of photonic chips, devices and subsystems, including its fifth-generation coherent digital signal processor family, the Photonic Service Engine V (PSE-V).

The explosion in video and mobile bandwidth demand over the past decade has been met through the continual advancement of optical and silicon technology. But as fundamental limits of transmission capacity and processing power are approached, network operators will need new ways to continue to scale their networks to meet the surging demands of 5G and cloud networking, while containing cost. Key to this transition is 400 Gigabit Ethernet (400G) technology.

Set to become the pervasive network interface across IP, optical and data center networks, 400G marks the first common data rate since the introduction of 100G approximately 10 years ago. As the foundational technology for high bandwidth transport, the critical task of electro-optics in the coming years will be to transport 400G services at the lowest cost across a wide range of networking applications, each with distinct size, power, and performance requirements.

Nokia’s WaveFabric Elements portfolio combines digital signal processing (DSP) and optics technologies focused on emerging end-to-end 400G applications, allowing Nokia to optimize the entire electro-optic engine that powers today’s networks and the transformational upgrades to come. This high degree of vertical integration ensures that Nokia’s optical solutions will meet the unique economic and technical requirements of data center, metro, long haul, and subsea networks.

Nokia’s fifth-generation coherent DSP family, comprising the high-performance Nokia PSE-Vs (super coherent) and the low power PSE-Vc (compact), continues Nokia’s history of developing multiple DSPs optimized for different optical networking applications, form factors, and platforms.

The new DSPs are complemented by the CSTAR portfolio of coherent optical engines brought to Nokia via its recent acquisition of Elenion Technologies, a pioneer in silicon photonics. A new family of pluggable transceiver modules allows Nokia to address their critical and expanding role in data center, IP and optical networks, as well as emerging markets and applications highly dependent upon low-cost optical connectivity, such as access and mobile networking.

The CSTAR family of optical engines are currently shipping to customers. PSE-V-based platforms and pluggables will be available beginning in Q4 2020.

The Nokia WaveFabric Elements portfolio addresses the demanding power, performance, and cost-per-bit requirements of 400G networking across data center, metro, core and subsea applications:

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